Where do candidates stand on early vote?

State office oversees long-standing practice

Early voting remains a flashpoint in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

Early voting has continually grown in popularity in Arizona, and the candidates for secretary of state are among those who use it.

Five of the six people vying to become Arizona’s top election official are consistent early voters, records show. But not all of them actually support the system.

Nearly 90% of Arizona voters participated in early voting in 2020, which allows them to mail in their ballots, drop them off at the polls on Election Day or go to an early voting center to cast their ballot.

Recently, the state Supreme Court declined to take a case from the Republican Party of Arizona that argued early voting is unconstitutional. Lawmakers earlier this year approved a 2022 ballot proposition that would require more ID from early voters.

And some of the recommendations from state Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s interim report on his 2020 election investigation suggest stricter rules for verifying signatures on early ballot affidavits.

The candidates’ views on the practice are important as the secretary of state oversees election administration and early voting remains a flashpoint in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

State Rep. Mark Finchem, a Republican candidate for secretary of state, said he disagrees with early voting, despite a record that shows he’s cast an early ballot in almost every election since 2004, according to Pima County voting records.

The other candidates who would comment on their views on early voting — Democrats Reginald Bolding and Adrian Fontes and Republican Beau Lane — said the system is sound and convenient to voters. Efforts to dismantle early voting, as the lawsuit

filed by the state GOP attempted, would result in disaster, they said.

Republican Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a state senator from Scottsdale, did not return requests to discuss her views on litigation and early voting.

Another Republican candidate, Phoenix state Rep. Shawnna Bolick, would not comment about her views on early voting, saying it was “nobody’s business,” nor would she say if she is an early voter.

Finchem: ‘Men are not angels’

Finchem is the only candidate to call for an end to most early voting.

That’s consistent with his withdrawal from the active early voting list, something he recently did. And it fits with the agenda of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, of which he is a founding member.

The group’s platform includes the elimination of mail-in ballots but retention of “traditional” absentee ballots, such as for military and people who are traveling when an election is held. Eight candidates are currently in the coalition, mostly from Western states. All Republicans, they identify as constitutional conservatives and are calling for single-day voting.

“I think that early voting opens up the pathway to fraud,” Finchem said.

He did not provide any specific examples, but said it was logical to him that a system in which it takes days to count votes — with daily updates — is ripe for someone to mess with ballots and skew results.

“What do you think would happen?” Finchem said of his suspicions of early voting. “Men are not angels.”

Early ballots are prepared for tabulation by a volunteer board made up of representatives of opposing political parties. Ballot tabulation is recorded on a live feed that is publicly available.

The Arizona Senate’s ballot review of Maricopa County’s 2020 presidential and U.S. Senate votes did not find any evidence that votes were switched or ignored in an election that handed Joe Biden the presidency. The recount, done by the Cyber Ninjas on behalf of state Senate Republicans, tracked closely to the official results and actually found more votes for Biden than county election workers did.

Finchem, who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, is a proponent of the Stop the Steal movement, was present at the Jan. 6 rally and march to the U.S. Capitol (though he did not go inside) and was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“I’ve never been in favor of early voting,” Finchem said, even though he is recorded as having done so for 16 years and as recently as the 2020 general election that he now questions.

“Well, I voted when my ballot came in the mail,” he said. “It was convenient, I held my ballot until the last minute. And I never mailed it.”

Instead, he said, he dropped it off at the polls.

Arizonans love early voting

Convenience is a big reason voters like Arizona’s early-voting system, said Lane, who runs the advertising firm LaneTerralever. Like many others, Lane said he likes the ability to research the candidates and issues on his ballot while sitting at the kitchen table.

“If you were a business doing consumer research and you found out that 90% of your customers preferred this method, would you end it?” Lane said, referring to the popularity of early voting in 2020.

Maricopa County records show he has been an early voter since 2000. In some elections, he returned his ballot by mail; in others, records indicate he dropped it off at the polls.

“Arizonans, including everybody running for office right now, have voted this way for decades,” Lane said. “We have one of the most refined early voting systems in the country.”

There are “flaws,” he said, such as duplicate ballots arriving for a single voter, but he attributes that to clerical, not systemic, problems.

“That boils down to having good data,” Lane said. “That’s something that can be addressed by the (county) recorders, and should be.”

Ending the PEVL

It’s unclear where the other two Republican candidates stand on early voting as practiced in Arizona.

Last year, Ugenti-Rita successfully authored a bill that abolished the permanent early vote list, known as the PEVL. Voters will continue to get an early ballot in the mail as long as they vote in two consecutive elections in which a federal race is on the ballot.

She cast the legislation as a way to clean up the voter rolls. Critics charged it would disenfranchise thousands, mostly lower-efficacy Democratic voters. It won’t have any practical effect until after the 2024 election cycle.

Maricopa County records show that on registration forms from 2015 forward, Ugenti-Rita checked “yes” on the box asking to be put on the permanent early voting list. If she continues to vote regularly, she will remain on what is now called the active early voting list.

Her record indicates she’s likely to continue getting a ballot by mail. She has voted in every election since she registered to vote in 1998, when she turned 18.

She voted by mail from 2008 through fall 2021, the years for which her voting method is recorded by the county, with some intermittent in-person voting.

Similar records are off-limits for Bolick, due to a provision in state law that provides address confidentiality for judges, police officers, prison officials and others. That extends to family members who live at the same address.

When asked, Bolick declined to answer if she uses the early-voting system or votes in person. She cast it as a personal matter, although state law makes public details such as whether a person voted and which method they used. Ballots are secret, so there is no way public records can show which candidates or issues an individual voted for.

In addition, because her husband sits on the state Supreme Court, Bolick said she would not talk about the legal challenge to early voting.

Boosting mail-in voting

The two Democratic candidates for secretary of state both are regular early voters and both criticized the lawsuit that challenged the system’s constitutionality.

Fontes, who was Maricopa County recorder from 2017 to 2021, said he’s a strong proponent of early voting and the vote-by-mail option it provides. His record shows he has used early voting almost exclusively.

“Voting by mail is more secure than voting at the polls,” he said, echoing the findings of numerous studies. “The more vote centers, the more polling places you have, the more complex the security profile of the place becomes.”

For example, the risk of important voting equipment being left behind after a poll closes increases with the number of locations, he said.

Studies have shown that early voting, which is done over a period of weeks, allows more time to deal with glitches. If a problem arises on Election Day, it must be remedied immediately and could disrupt voting.

In Arizona, where early voting has happened for three decades, reports of fraud are few and far between.

Fontes favors early voting over inperson voting.

“One-hundred percent vote by mail, with the choice of coming in and voting in person if you want, is the best way to go,” Fontes said.

Bolding also has a consistent record of early voting, records show. “I’ve historically voted by mail ever since I’ve been on the rolls in Arizona,” said Bolding, a member of the state House of Representatives from Laveen. “My wife and I have a tradition of getting our ballots by mail.”

While records show he mostly returned his ballot by mail, Bolding said he has also dropped off his ballot on Election Day. “We love the symbolism of going to the polls and seeing other voters at the polls,” he said. “We’d go and get the Election Day stickers.”

Bipartisanship created practice

Arizona lawmakers authorized early voting in 1991. Although widely portrayed as a Republican creation, the bill was introduced by then-Senate President Pete Rios, a Democrat. It had strong support, passing unanimously in the 60-member House of Representatives and with 24 votes of 30 votes in the Senate, legislative records show.

Among the dissenters were Jan Brewer, a Glendale senator who went on to become secretary of state and then governor, and current gubernatorial candidate Matt Salmon, then a Mesa state senator. Last fall, Salmon signed the Arizona Patriot Party’s “Contract With Arizona” that, among other things, calls for an end to early voting.

Arizonans embraced early voting, especially Republicans. Even Kelly Ward, the state GOP chair, has voted early since Trump’s election in 2016, public records show.